


Medusa

by KieraElieson



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Magic, Men Crying, Rescue, Sickfic, killing mention, magical coersion, throwing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KieraElieson/pseuds/KieraElieson
Summary: Logan is a Gorgon. To be more specific, he's the dragon witch's Gorgon. But when Patton sees him, he can't just leave him there.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Comments: 20
Kudos: 101





	Medusa

Logan shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like when guests came. To be fair, there was very little that he did like about what his life had become, but guests were the worst. Ever since the dragon witch had abducted him he’d been a possession, but some days he could think of himself at least as a living possession. As a guard dog. But not when guests came. When guests came he was only a trophy. 

He was held almost entirely still by a binding magic, standing straight with his hands behind his back like a servant waiting for orders. Covering his eyes was an ornate golden blindfold, which was only for decoration as the magic forced him to keep his eyes closed. 

Judging by the long wait, this guest must actually be someone with royal blood, whom the dragon witch was trying to intimidate. He was somewhere in the room, but Logan wasn’t entirely sure exactly where. 

Suddenly he felt the itch. No. Sneezes while under binding magic were  _ incredibly  _ awkward. But sure enough, his body twitched and convulsed in a futile attempt to make him sneeze. 

There was a thump, as of someone falling over, and a shocked, “Oh, dear!” 

Logan, of course, could not reply, other than flushing at the realization that he’d been observed in that unpleasant situation. 

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were alive.” The voice said after a long second. 

With Logan unable to reply, there was silence again. 

“You—- are alive, right?”

Logan managed to purse his lips and nod very minutely. 

“Oh, good.” The voice said, relieved. “That would’ve been really creepy. My name’s Patton!”

Logan had no way of returning the favor, but he managed another minute nod in acknowledgement. 

“Um… is Mrs. Dragon Witch home? I thought she was, but maybe that was just some magic.”

Logan’s lips quirked up ever so slightly. So much for intimidation. He nodded. 

“Oh, ok. So are you… stuck? Can you move?”

Shaking his head was more prohibited by the binding than nodding, and Logan pursed his lips. 

“Oh. What if I move you off of that stand? Could you move then?”

“Having fun with my pet?” The dragon witch said smoothly, finally entering the room. “Would you like to pet his head?”

When the guest spoke next, he sounded almost offended. “I don’t think he’d like that.”

“You don’t? Why don’t you ask him?” Even without seeing her, Logan could feel her eyes on him, and feel the threat if he should say no. 

The binding suddenly released, and Logan nearly fell over, but was caught by someone that wasn’t the dragon witch. 

“Well, pet, what do you say? Would you like to be petted?”

Before Logan could respond, Patton said almost angrily, “He’s a person, you shouldn’t do this!”

“He’s my pet, I can do whatever I like,” the dragon witch said, annoyed. 

“No you can’t! It’s not right!”

Logan’s arm was suddenly grabbed in a familiar vice grip, and he didn’t resist being pulled away from Patton. Being pushed to his knees was much less enjoyable, but he knew better than to struggle at this point. It was go willingly or be forced. 

“Why did you come here, anyway?” The dragon witch said coldly. 

“I was curious,” Patton said, his voice clipped with anger. “I wanted to know why everyone was so afraid of you.”

“Curious?” The dragon witch said. “And without knowing why people are afraid of me you would dare to challenge me over my property?”

“He’s not property, he’s a person!”

“I see.” Her tone made Logan shiver, and she lifted the blindfold off of his eyes. 

Logan squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to do this. Not to someone who’d tried to help him. 

But instead of commanding him to look at Patton, she laughed slightly, a cold, brittle laugh. 

“Then take him. Take him away with you. You can have him.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she said sweetly, before her voice ground low again. “But he will regret it. You show me that you can handle something like he is, and you can keep him. But you won’t. You’ll just make him miserable, and he’ll come crawling back to me begging the instant you let him go.”

Logan did  _ not  _ like the sound of that. Not at all. 

But his hand was lifted and put into Patton’s, and Patton tugged gently until Logan got to his feet and followed him, still keeping his eyes carefully closed. 

The sun hit his skin as they stepped outside, a sensation he hadn’t felt in he didn’t even know how long. 

“Ugh, I don’t like all the statues,” Patton said. “I thought you were one too, at first.”

His words hit Logan with the force of a punch to his gut. Statues. He’d made those. He’d…… he’d  _ killed  _ people to make those. 

Awful, terrible feelings, emotions he hadn’t felt before, welled up in his stomach, making it twist and lurch. Tears started leaking out from his tightly closed eyelids and breathing was getting hard. He stumbled, and then pulled away from Patton, turning his face away as he gagged. 

“Are you ok?!”

Logan shook his head and gagged again, his breathing speeding up and making him dizzy, which just made him more nauseous. 

“We have to get you out of here, she’s doing something to you!” Patton said, pulling Logan. “If we get back to my camp, Virgil can break whatever spell it is.”

Logan stumbled behind Patton, his mind a never-ending whirl of eyes. Terrified eyes, looking into his, pleading with him. Eyes that turned to stone. They were always the last, always pleading the longest, and he’d never once listened. 

He choked, tears pouring out even more as his body shook. 

“I’m so sorry,” Patton said. “We just have to get you to Virgil.”

Patton suddenly whistled very loudly, and there was a whistle in response. Then another person’s voice that Logan wasn’t paying much attention to. 

“Who’s— wait, how do you have  _ him _ ?!”

“Virgil, he’s been cursed, you have to help!”

Patton let go of Logan’s hand, which left Logan free to curl up on the ground and let out a weak, raspy scream. 

“He’s… not. There’s no curses on him Pat.”

“Well,  _ something’s  _ wrong!” Patton exclaimed. 

A hand laid gently on Logan’s back, rubbing soft circles. “Did something happen?”

“I-I—“ Logan’s attempt at speech devolved into another scream, wailing into the dirt. 

“Patton, tell me what happened,” Virgil said firmly, but his hand remained gentle on Logan’s back. 

Patton ran through the events quickly, but Logan wasn’t paying attention. His body was still rushing, making him cry, and scream, and his stomach lurch again and again. He didn’t understand it, but he did understand that it was swiftly exhausting him. He hadn’t been so drained in… he didn’t even know when. 

The intense… grief? Whatever it was, it gave way to the exhaustion, and Logan dropped unpleasantly into sleep. 

  * •^*^••



He woke slowly, feeling sore and exhausted, his head aching. His eyes opened partway before he realized that someone was sitting over him, and he squeezed them shut, letting out a cry as panic shot through him at the close call. He rolled away from the person, bringing his hands up to his face. 

“Heeey, it’s alright,” a low voice said calmly. 

A sob worked its way up in his throat. 

A hand gently rested on his shoulder, not gripping or pushing him, and Logan was even more confused by the sudden impulse to grab that hand and hold it close to his chest. 

His mind was swirling, but hardly any of it was thoughts. He’d felt emotions enough before to identify them as the problem, but why they were so  _ strong  _ and so  _ many  _ he had no idea. 

“We think we’ve figured out what happened,” the voice said gently, and the hand moved in small circles. “How long have you been with her?”

“Since… I don’t know. I was a child.” Logan said, sobs threatening to spill out now that he’d opened his mouth. 

“Did you eat? Or sleep?”

“I— no.” Logan shook his head miserably. “I watched.”

The voice hummed quietly. “Well, we think that since you aren’t cursed now, you were then. She took away your need to eat, and to sleep, and to feel. It’s all coming back to you now, and you don’t know how to regulate it.”

Tears spilled over. “I don’t want to regulate it, I want it gone!” Logan started sobbing again, the pain in his head growing to be almost as great as the pain in his chest and stomach. “Send me back, it hurts!”

But the person didn’t answer other than to make soft, comforting noises and to rub his back while Logan sobbed. 

Slowly, far, far too slowly, the sobs faded into sniffles. Logan was far too miserable now to care about any kind of propriety, and he reached up to pull the hand down, curling around it as if it was his lifeline. Whoever it belonged to was kind enough to both let him and also not comment. 

Some time later, footsteps came towards them. “Here, it’s ready now.”

A second hand patted his shoulder. “Do you want to try eating?”

Logan shook his head.

There was a brief silence before his shoulder was patted again. “Can you try, please? If you haven’t eaten in so long, it might be dangerous not to.”

Logan sat up and groaned as his head pounded even more. “Could I have a blindfold?”

“Why?” Patton asked, but was quickly shushed. 

“Of course you can.”

Moments later was a sound of ripping fabric, and then a long strip of cloth was given to him. Safely blindfolded, he relaxed a bit, which seemed to make him feel just a tiny sliver better. 

“Here you go,” Patton said gently, giving him a bowl that was warm to the touch. 

Logan lifted it to his mouth, well aware that two pairs of eyes were fixed on him. Based on smell, it seemed to be a weak broth with herbs. It didn’t seem like something he would enjoy, but when he took the first swallow it didn’t taste bad. Almost as soon as it hit his stomach though he lurched, leaning to the side and vomiting up the little he’d drunk. He also managed to spill broth onto his pants, which made him even more uncomfortable. 

He found himself incredibly frustrated, and tears welled up in his eyes again. Tears that he  _ did not  _ want. But getting angry at himself for tearing up was enough to push him over the edge into full crying yet again. 

He held out the bowl in the same direction it had come in. “I can’t do this. Please, just let me go back. I’ll find my own way. I don’t want this.”

“No.” Patton said, gently, but firmly. “She did not treat you right, and put some kind of a spell on you so that you couldn’t even get mad enough to try and fight back.”

Disappointment so heavy it felt like a weight fell on Logan. “Please, if this is what I was missing I don’t want it!”

A hand cupped his face gently. “No, this isn’t it. This is because she kept it all away for so long. Just give us some time, ok? Two weeks, and then if you still want to go back I’ll let you.”

Two weeks of this misery. This hell. It might as well have been eternity. Logan choked on sobs again.

“Ohhh… can I hug you?”

Logan wasn’t even sure. He had only the vaguest idea of what a hug was. But then arms were wrapping around him, and it wasn’t restraining, it was warm, and kind, and he leaned his head down to sob into Patton’s shoulder. 

“It’ll be alright. Just let it all out.”

Logan hated this. He hated every single bit of all of this. Except maybe the hug. That was tolerable.

  * •^*^••



The Gorgon was safely asleep again, and Virgil pulled Patton aside. 

“Are you  _ sure  _ this is a good idea?”

Patton’s face grew determined and a little offended. “I’m  _ very  _ sure! Just look at him! He can’t even let himself see things!”

Virgil sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d hoped it had just slipped Patton’s mind, but no, he really didn’t know. “He’s a Gorgon, Patton. If he gets angry enough at us he could just pull down that blindfold and we’d both be stone.”

Patton’s face went ashen. He was silent a long moment, not quite looking at Virgil. “That’s why…”

“Why what?”

“It started when we went out of the cave and saw all the statues. I thought it was the dragon witch casting the spell once we were outside, but he saw them all. He… he killed them all…”

Virgil crossed his arms, looking down. “Yeah, that’s… That’s what Gorgons do.”

“No!” Patton said. “Not him! He didn’t want to, I’m sure of it. That’s why he started crying when he saw them.”

“Yeah, but he did.”

Patton gave him the sternest glare he was capable of. “He was also standing frozen until she let him move. It’s not his fault.”

Virgil tried giving a noncommittal half-smile and shrug. 

But Patton didn’t seem satisfied with that. “Virgil, you had  _ better  _ be nice to him--!”

“I never said I wouldn’t!” Virgil protested. “Just we have to be careful. And honest about what he is.”

“He is a person!”

Virgil sighed. “Yes. A person that could kill us with a glance.”

Patton frowned, crossing his arms. “If you make him upset I’ll never hug you again.”

Virgil threw up his hands. “Everything is gonna make him upset right now!”

“You know what I mean!”

Virgil sighed. “Fine. Yes. I’ll be nice to the Gorgon.”

“Thank you.”

  * •^*^••



Logan woke again to a pounding headache, and an ache in his stomach, but mind temporarily clearer, not swarmed with emotions. 

Someone was stirring something near him, and he could hear the tell-tale crackle of a fire. 

“Morning,” the voice that wasn’t Patton’s said. “Sleep well?”

Logan sat up. “Not particularly.”

“Well, that’s no fun. Anyway, I’m supposed to get you to eat something, but just a little, like a spoonful.”

Logan shrugged. It wasn’t like they cared what he wanted anyway. 

His hand was touched, and a spoon put into it carefully. He sipped it, and wasn’t surprised that it was the same thing as before. His stomach cramped, but he didn’t think he’d throw up.

“Better?”

Logan shrugged. 

“Well, how are you feeling?”

“My head hurts, and my stomach.”

“Mmmm, yeah. Your head is probably from all the crying.”

Logan grimaced.

“I can try something, if you want.”

“If I say no, you’ll just do it anyway.”

The person sucked in a quick breath. “No, I wouldn’t. Let’s… We got off on the wrong foot. My name is Virgil, it’s nice to meet you.”

Logan wasn’t sure what feet had to do with anything, but he held out a hand for the standard shake. “My name is Logan. It has genuinely not been nice to make your acquaintance, but I do hope that you are correct and that I will enjoy it more later.”

He could practically hear the grimace. “Yeah… we do too. Anyway, I can do some magic. It’s not amazing or anything, but it might help your headache, if you don’t mind me trying.”

“Honestly, I would accept anything that would relieve some of this pain,” Logan sighed.

“Alright, I’m going to move next to you, and you can lay back and put your head in my lap. I’ll be touching your head to do the magic. Will that be ok?”

Logan nodded, and let Virgil maneuver him into the desired position. Almost as soon as Virgil’s fingers touched his scalp he started to feel relief, and his whole body relaxed as Virgil continued, soft rubbing motions in little circles all over. 

As the pain entirely faded away, it even started to feel… nice. Logan found himself letting out a little hum sometimes as Virgil kept going.

Virgil chuckled. “I guess that means it’s working?”

“It is a pleasant sensation,” Logan said, his voice ever so slightly slurred. He could barely remember being so relaxed before.

“Can I try feeding you just one more spoonful? You’d just have to open your mouth.”

“You may,” Logan said, unaccustomed to giving permission.

He opened his mouth to accept one more spoonful of the broth, which made his stomach clench again, but he just breathed in deep, and then Virgil continued his ministrations, which made him relax, and his stomach gradually unwound itself.

  * •^*^••



Patton was extremely glad to come back from getting firewood to see the man, whose name was apparently Logan, asleep on Virgil’s lap, and a half-empty bowl of broth beside them.

Things seemed to be looking up again.

Until Logan woke up with a nightmare. He screamed and sobbed, covering his already-covered eyes. Patton hugged him tight, letting him hide his face in Patton’s chest and cry, telling Patton about the eyes he was seeing, and about the pleas he was hearing, and about how he hadn’t cared about any of it. Patton just rocked him back and forth and listened to it all come out, and then reassured Logan that it wasn’t his fault. 

It was a long, long night before Logan finally fell back asleep.

“You know,” Virgil said contemplatively. “If we help him get better, we can say we defeated the dragon witch’s monster, cause that’s kind of true. And then we can just let him be Logan.”

Patton didn’t think they needed to claim defeating a monster, but he did like the idea of not letting people know who Logan used to be.

  * •^*^••



It was only one week later, rather than two, when Logan decided for himself that he never, ever wanted to go back. Things were beginning to settle down. He still cried, but no more the great wracking sobs, and he was able to eat small meals now. His intense longing for gentle touch had faded somewhat, and he found that he apparently had moods that were meant to regulate that. There were also moods for eating, and the intensity of the different kinds of moods also varied. 

Virgil and Patton walked him around, gradually farther and farther away from the dragon witch. He saw grass, which he remembered, and trees which he also remembered, but he hadn’t remembered the variety. And he certainly hadn’t remembered how very many different plants there were. 

And then, when one night he didn’t fall asleep right away, and saw the stars, he felt like he really had lost something great by being with the dragon witch so long. How he’d been kept from them so long he didn’t know, but he vowed that it wouldn’t happen again.

As it turned out, Patton was the third prince of a nearby kingdom, and Virgil was his servant. Logan would have never guessed Virgil was a servant had he not been told. They’d always seemed so equal. So when Patton offered him a similar position, wincing and apologizing for the title, and promising that he would never think of Logan as any less than himself, or try to make him do anything he didn’t want to, Logan accepted.


End file.
